DOE wants to squander $5 million to (only study) routing natural gas from Pasco through a $250 million, 6- to 20-inch pipe run under the Columbia to the site to dry out a "waste" stream feeding the VIT plant.

Had effluent from the chop-leach Purex "waste" stream been treated to recover valuable isotopes and metals while still in an acid solution, there would have been no stream to neutralize with NaOH, no tank farm, no need for the VIT plant at all!

Having created the problem, DOE now wants to fix it by moving a heat source from Pasco to Hanford.

(Un)common sense dictates locating a heat source as close as possible to the intended point of use.

We could use power from WPPS#2 (Whoops#2) or power recovered from refueling one of 150-plus 80MW sub reactors scrapped at Hanford. We could even use my 1986 campaign platform idea of mass producing (cookie cutter-style) 300 mega- watt modular nuclear plants constructed here at Hanford, and dedicate one reactor to powering the VIT plant with electricity!

The idea of piping gas 30 miles to the Hanford site is ludicrous, but is clearly in line with DOE's blurred vision of throwing good money after bad.

Rob Dupuy, Pasco